South Bend overpowers Whitecaps, 8-3

COMSTOCK PARK -- "SpongeBob SquarePants," "High School Musical" and "YMCA" were bigger hits than the West Michigan Whitecaps were on Wednesday.

That's because the Whitecaps were hosting the first of two back-to-back school day games against the South Bend Silver Hawks at Fifth Third Ballpark.

The crowd of 8,305, made up mostly of screaming youngsters, saw the Silver Hawks pound out 12 hits, including two home runs, in their 8-3 victory.

The loss marked the third in a row for the Whitecaps (27-23), who have scored just three runs in the past 22 innings, dating back to four scoreless innings last Sunday. They were shutout on Memorial Day by Dayton and didn't have a run cross the plate until the fourth inning Wednesday.

The win was only the second for South Bend (21-30) in nine games against West Michigan this season.

Things looked good for the Whitecaps early, who scored first with two runs in the fourth inning (a home run by Chris Carlson and an RBI single by Jordan Newton). But the Silver Hawks answered with two runs in the fifth inning and scored three in the sixth to take the lead.

"The last couple of games we've gone through an offensive outage," West Michigan manager Joe DePastino said. "When we've gotten leads, we're not putting teams away, swinging at bad pitches early in the count.

"We seem to be in a hitting funk and it's unusual for the whole team to be in one, but we are," DePastino said.

DePastino said it's no time to panic and no lineup changes are in order, yet.

Carlson, batting clean-up, was the only Whitecaps hitter to collect two hits in the contest. The team finished with eight.

Along with Newton, the other West Michigan RBI belonged to Ronnie Bourquin on a bases-loaded walk.

"Home runs have been few and far between for me," Carlson said, who hit his fourth. "It's hard to score seven or eight runs when you get a few hits and early in the season we (the team) was hitting the ball and scoring runs.

"It something (the hitting funk) we will just have to hit our way out of," Carlson said.

The top of the Silver Hawks' lineup went 4-for-10 with 5 RBIs.

Matt Oxendine, blasted a three-run homer in the eighth inning. South Bend's other home run belonged to No. 9 hitter Aaron Hanke.